My experiments with food...

  Xiamen, China
Tuesday, June 10, 2008

I was not too worried about food. We Indians are terrific at adapting! We may crib a bit about food (can't blame us - Indian food, I have realised by now, is the best in the world - we have 350 ways of making potatoes, fantastic variety, and keeping in mind that india runs from Nagaland and Mizoram to Gujarat to Malvan to Kerala to Andhra pradesh to Punjab to Kashmir to UP to Bengal.... oooh we've got more dishes than probably the rest of the world!) .

Anways, I'd decided that what was good for the locals was good for me. I usually prefer vegetarian food, but don't mind eating anything else to survive. But food just was not a problem.

Firstly there is rice  everywhere... and the servings are MASSIVE! I had  trouble finishing the food most of the time! Since lunch was often with office collegues (locasl), they taught me how to use chop sticks.


One good part about eating with chopsticks is that you are allowed to slurp - so eating noodles and rice is not too difficult. You are allowed to shove the rice into your mouth from the bowl, but after some time ther was no need for that. Chinese rice (at least here in Fujian... and I think food in China is extremely diverse) is sticky so you can eat it with chopsticks.

The soups almost always were clear ... and usually tasty - except for the smell of seafood (I'm allergic to it)
I'd always pick off the greens in my dish first - - and then try out all the other guests on my dish - as long as it did not move! If it tasted fine, I'd have a few more morsels - never asked what it was ("Do not ask what you don't want to knw" - Old Jungle Saying!)

If you can eat chicken, port and beef - you can have all the variety of food you wish for a month!

And if you like seafood - you'll freak out!! (unfortunately i don't !)

On some of the days my Chinese friends took me out for food - it was fun... some dishes I found tasty - the others they found. they'd tell me what each dish was - There was a lot of talking, laughing, joking and they did their best to make me comfortable by often translating what they spoke.
This was the first time I had tofu, lotus stems, lotus flowers ....
And then I discovered that the SM mall near the office, alongwith the outrageously expensive (and with as lousy and unhealthy crappy food as they dish out in India) Mc Donalds, KFC and Pizza hut, had a great place called "Kauai ke" - excellent food (my taste), Chinese in flavour, hugely popular with locals (so my logic is it must be good) and reasonaby priced ( a hearty meal for 15 RMB) -
I had my dinner and lunch there whenever I felt like enjoying the aircon.

And would top it up with fresh watermelons purchased off the road (1 RMB) till  I discovered that the Walmart sold fruits at the same price as  the local market  - Stocked lots of bananas, pears, apples and juices in my fridge and I think 've already put on a kilo or two!


incidentally there now are 130 walmarts in China!

It also made a pleasant walk at night -
There were also these tasty meat balls whhc I'd have sometimes

I would pick off the (Chinese) menu from each place, take it to the office, get my friends to translate it, cross out "unwanted" items and next time, just point at the item in the menu - this worked like magic my whole stay!

So if someone tells you food can be an issue in China, don't believe him / her - just be a bit adjusting and you'll have no problem.